Oil Filter Debris Analysis (FDA)

Oil Filtration is essential on todays’ modern high-precision machinery, plant and equipment as oil cleanliness is necessary for the reliable operation of machinery components such as bearings, gears and hydraulics.

Routine oil sampling & Wear Debris Analysis is able to monitor the lubricant condition and current rate of wear but in well filtered systems a major portion of the wear debris will often be removed by the equipment’s oil filters masking the severity of wear.

Oil filters contain snap shot of wear debris and contamination that was removed by the filter media providing a recorded history of dirt and debris removed plus a comprehensive assessment of machine wear that as occurred over the time line since the oil filter was installed.

FDA is able to analyse the wear particles caught in the filter media in their original shape assisting with analysing because often the particle are removed by the filter media before being over rolled in the machines gears and bearings.

When equipment failures occur on oil lubricated systems the oil filter will contain important information that will assist with root causing the failure and the oil filter should be removed, bagged and labelled for later analysis.

R&T has developed oil filter wear debris removal systems that have the ability to target specific contaminates or remove all contamination for analysis as a WDA or Ferrogram depending upon the lubricant type and contamination encountered.

These images display some of the filter types R&T has completed Filter Debris Analysis upon.

Filter Debris Analysis is able to provide an advanced warning of abnormal wear in critical plant and equipment providing the equipment operator important information on conditions that could lead to wear damage on the rotating equipment. This information enables the proper scheduling of maintenance actions saving money by avoiding future downtime and reducing maintenance costs.

The report examples below demonstrate how modern oil filtration can remove the majority of abnormal wear debris and contamination to such a low level that conventional oil analysis cannot easily detect the abnormal wear.